Tyra Banks, pseudo talk show host and saviour of all that is “fierce”, is back with her band of beauties and beasts for America’s Next Top Model – Cycle 11 tonight. Slightly freaky at the best of times, and not without it’s share of melodrama, this cycle features, for the first time ever, a transgendered contestant who not only knows how to model, but gets treated rather badly by the rest of the fresh-from-the-farm kittens who think he/she has no right to be there.
Still, despite the obvious headline grabbing tactics at work, the show is nonetheless driven by much more than things that think they’re pretty, witty and gay. Adding some genuine substance to the show is the biofuel (bio-diesel) limo-bus which has been designed to be 100% green and, unlike some of the models, good for the environment.
Taking the girls from place to place, the go-green bus first splashed onto the small screen last year back in Cycle 9 where, along with no-smoking, no-littering, and conserve energy rules (yeah right), the bus made quite an entrance. Brandishing a banner that read “Green is the New Black”, the bus’s slogan has since been updated to read “Green is Fierce”.
I guess Kermit the Frog said it best – it ain’t easy being green – but in Tyra’s world of hair-weaves and “sistahood”, it’s somewhat understandable. Still, shots of the bus snaking its way through L.A. are featured prominently on the show leaving me to wonder . . . just who was in that gas guzzling car following the bus and what color was it?
America’s Next Top Model airs Wednesdays in prime time across The CW Network and features Tyra Banks, Jay Manuel, J. Alexander, Nigel Barker and Paulina Porizkova and is produced by Ken Mok.
– as published by Canadian Auto Press on September 3, 2008